The present invention relates to the field of communications, particularly closed environment communication, local conferencing and the use of existing voice and data messaging systems in these fields of communication.
There are numerous personal mobile communication devices available on the market at the present time, such as cellular phones, PDA's (Personal Digital Assistants), WiFi and Bluetooth laptop processors (PC and Mac), smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, and other hand-sized, computer-based communication devices, and even electronic tablets, such as the Apple iPad, the ASUS Nexus 7 and the like with mobile communication applications. Despite their ubiquity, the technology for these systems is still underutilized and use has focused on their primary functions and not derivative or ancillary capabilities, especially when combined with other technologies.
In conferences, meetings, classrooms and the like, a typical question-and-answer period allows participants to ask questions from the floor. In a large venue without amplification, others in the room often have trouble hearing the speaker. Commonly, a microphone is provided in one or more aisles or a portable microphone is passed to a person wishing to ask a question. This can force people to maneuver their seating towards the aisles where microphone access might be more easily available, or cause some significant and disturbing activity in audiences and lead to disruption of the underlying meeting. The movement of the microphones through the audience can be tedious, slow (e.g., from one extreme corner of a room to another) and cumbersome. There can also be such significant jousting for attention as to be disconcerting to participants and lead to a loss of audience control.
This current system also may not work because a microphone is not available, does not work well, or there is no portable microphone handy near the participant who wishes to speak. Often, the participant speaker doesn't properly use a microphone—waving it about or placing it too far away from his or her mouth while speaking—thus negating the advantages of the microphone.
The present invention addresses or substantially mitigates these problems.